User talk:HRH

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Welcome, HRH! Thank you for your great contributions on all sorts of Yoruba-related topics; they are very helpful and knowledgeable. Since you're new to Wikipedia, I thought I'd provide you with a few good links for newcomers:

Also, judging from your contributions, I thought you might be interested in the Africa-related regional notice board ; and probably in WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias, too. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~); it produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Kind regards, — mark ✎ 17:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Yoruba

Ẹ k'ãsǎn, YRH! Just a quick note to let you know that I've responded to your points at Talk:Yoruba. Kind regards, — mark ✎ 08:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Could I ask you a few questions on Yoruba?

Your Royal Highness (I think I never adressed someone like that on Wikipedia),

You seem to be a native speaker of ede Yoruba. Could I ask you a few questions about the language? I'm thinking about a few concepts that seem central to the Yoruba conception of a person. Ọkàn, for example. Some dictionaries translate it as 'heart', but I have not yet come across it being used simply in the anatomical sense. Instead, the impression I get from utterances like ọkàn mi wà ní ibòmíràn and ọ̀rọ̀ náà dùn mí dé ọkàn is that the primary function of ọkàn is not to be found on the physiological level; it seems to be conceived of more as the source of emotional and psychic reactions. What are your thoughts on this? Also, would you say as a Yoruba that ọkàn is located inside the body (ara)? (i.e. ọkàn wà nínú ara, or possibly ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yàa ara -- or does that sound funny?).

I'd appreciate to hear your thoughts,

— mark ✎ 09:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


PS. You might like to know that the vertical line or the dot needed under certain Yoruba characters can be produced by the code ̣, so that o + ̣ yields ọ, etc. For example, if I am not mistaken, your full first name should be spelled Olúfẹ́mi (I am loved by God / God loves me). If you need any help (technical or otherwise), be sure to let me know on my talk page!

[edit] Yoruba heart and mind

Thanks Mark, for pointing out the technique for dotting my Yoruba vowels as with my first name (the prefix 'Olu' is short for 'Oluwa', meaning "the Lord"). I have never been able to do both the accents and the dots in Microsoft Word, so I usually choose either to dot or to accent. I will appreciate knowing how to dot accented vowels in Microsoft Word.

2. On your question, Ọkàn is used in Yoruba for both the 'heart' in the anatomical sense (located inside the body - ọkàn wà nínú ara) as well as the the 'mind' as in ọkàn mi wà ní ibòmíràn (my mind was elsewhere). Usually the context of usage will convey whether it is a reference to the physical "heart" or the psychic "mind." His Royal Highness

[edit] Dotting accented Yoruba vowels in Microsoft Word

  1. How it works in MS Word depends on the fonts you have and use. The dot used here is encoded in Unicode-compliant fonts as COMBINING DOT BELOW at position #0323. There is also a vertical line called COMBINING VERTICAL LINE BELOW at #0329. What this means is that you can insert these diacritics as symbols in your document, if you have the fonts in which they are contained. One such font can be downloaded here; another widespread one, which has been packed with MS Office from version 2003 on, is Arial Unicode MS; yet another one from Microsoft is Lucida Unicode MS. The way I do it in MS Word is as follows: (1) I go to 'Insert' and choose 'Symbol'. (2) In the window which opens then, I select one of the fonts mentioned above. I browse to symbol number 0323. If I select it, its name is shown: 'combining dot below', etc. (3) Then I hit insert.
    And there is a nice way to speed up this process. In the 'symbol' window, there is a button 'Shortcut...'. If you click that, you can define a shortcut key. I have chosen the key combination CTRL+SHIFT+.. Now, when I hit that key combination during editing, the dot is inserted below the vowel. To combine dots and accents, just make sure you use the preaccented letters which are included in every font. I.e., make sure you don't use a, add an accent, and then a dot, but use á, and then add the dot. If something is unclear, let me know.
  2. Thanks very much. Your response raises a follow-up question: does it make sense to say something like ọkàn rẹ̀ ń já, or ọkànmí ń lù kì-kì-kì? In other words, is it the ọkàn which beats within, or is it something else (as for the 'something else', I have seen àyà 'chest' being used in this sense, e.g. àyààmí ń lù kì-kì-kì). And related to this, if someone is afraid, do you say ó jáàyà or ó já ọkàn? (Or are both possible - if so, which one is more common?) Thanks for your time, — mark ✎ 17:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Body Parts in Yoruba

[edit] The heart and chest in Yoruba concept of fear

Thanks Mark for the technical tips. I can now pass it on to those who over the years have read my accented Yoruba and asked me to tell them how to dot the vowels. In fact I have copied certain Unicode charts but did not realize that I can use symbol insertion. I will practice with some documents over the weekend.

While you can say either ọkàn mí ńlù kì-kì-kì or àyàà mí ńlù kì-kì-kì to express fear as well as the direct reference to the accompanying rapid heartbeat, you can only say àyà mí já and NOT ọkàn mi já to express fear. The later is a reference to fear in general without any reference to a physiological accompaniment but to the general locale (in the Yoruba conception) of the "residence" of fear, saying my 'chest' is broken or cut (as in a string). The expression ọkàn mí ńlù kì-kì-kì may be used simply to mean physiological rapid or strong heartbeat that is unrelated to the feeling of fear. Paradoxically, the Yoruba would encourage a person to be courageous by saying "mu ọkàn" (take heart). His Royal Highness

Thanks so much, this really has improved my understanding of the issue. I was aware of expressions like ó lọ́kàn 'he has heart, i.e., he is brave', but it was considerable more difficult to find examples of ọkàn being used simply in the anatomical sense. (On a sidenote, would you say that ọkàn wà l'ára ara, or ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yàa ara? And what about ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yàa ènìyàn?)
The reason for all these questions is that I'm currently investigating the Yoruba terms for ara àtẹ̀yàarẹ̀, i.e. parts of the body. Maybe you'd like to take a look at some preliminary results [here] (pdf). I would appreciate if you could let me know if I missed any terms. Also, feel free to point other Yoruba speakers to it; any comments are highly appreciated. Ẹ ṣeun! — mark ✎ 11:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The expressions you list are correct but ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yàa ènìyàn is usually explicitly rendered as ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yà ara ènìyàn. The "parts of the body" should be written as ara àt'ẹ̀yàa rẹ̀ (literally the body and its parts) or more classically as "awọn ẹ̀yà ara" - "the parts of the body".

[edit] More Body Parts in Yoruba

The parts of the body in the pictures are correctly labelled except that "epon" is sufficient for scrotum (awo is referring to the skin of it). Also the word for the little finger is missing an "m" for kúrúmbéte. For "heel", the standard Yoruba should be gìgìrisè although "gigise" is used in some Yoruba dialects. His Royal Highness

Thanks very much, YRH! I have updated the illustrations with your corrections and have uploaded the new version [here]. I would like to acknowledge your help. Could you contact me via the Email this user feature, or alternatively via the email adress mentioned in the pdf? That way I'll also be able to tell you a little more about the study and the results. — mark ✎ 14:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
PS I will remove the link to the pdf in a few days, to avoid it being picked up by Google.
Done - email sent (HRH)
Oh, and again, your answers raise further questions. How should one translate ọkàn wà nínú ẹ̀yà ara ènìyàn? Is it (1) "the heart is among the elements of the whole of the person" or (2) "the heart is among the parts of the body of the person"? In other words, is ara in that sentence understood as "body" or as "whole"? — mark ✎ 14:30, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
The translation 2 is the correct one.(HRH)
And another issue I came across (if you don't mind): how does ẹyínojú wà nínú orí sound to you? — mark ✎ 16:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
The sentence ẹyínojú wà nínú orí is somewhat confusing because it translates as "the eye is inside the head". It is more explicit to say "ẹyínojú wà ní orí" or "ẹyínojú wà ní agbárí". His Royal Highness
I have received your email, will answer shortly. As for the translation of okàn wà nínú..., that's what I thought, since the main elements of ènìyàn are orí (inú), ara, and ẹ̀mí. The ẹyínojú sentences I would translate as 'the eye(ball) is in the head/skull'. Presumably, if one utters them colloquially, the ní would fuse with the following word, e.g. ẹyínojú wà l'órí (wouldn't it?).

Yes, just like "don't" is formally written as "do not".

Do you often use ẹyínojú for 'eye', or would you say ojú is more common? My feeling about ojú in the sense of 'eye' is that it is connected stongly with vision, whereas if you use ẹyínojú you're talking about it more in the sense of an object. — mark ✎ 07:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, ojú is the common usage except the context dictates differentiating between "face" and "eye".

[edit] DYK

Did You Know An entry from Nigerian Baptist Convention, which you created, appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 5 April 2006.
Wikipedia
^ that's why it attracted so much edits over the last few days. Nominating brand new articles at Template_talk:Did_you_know is usually a good way to get more editors to look at them and improve them. — mark ✎ 07:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blacksmiths of Western Africa

Greetings. May I suggest you have a look at this article that is up for deletion. It needs some sources and it seems you are likely to know some. --Bduke 23:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Email

Hello, HRH. Your email last week said that I should notify you if I hadn't heard from you before Wednesday. Seeing that you're active here, I thought I might as well contact you this way. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts (by email). Kind regards, — mark ✎ 07:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Responded by direct e-mail

His Royal Highness 23:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Nigerian Government Ministers

I whole series of articles on government ministers in Nigeria headed by Alhaji Adamu Bello are up for deletion. The articles were started and then left unfinished so they are a mess. Could you try to save them or find another Nigerian Wkipedian to do so? Nigeria deserves the same attention on its government as other countries. --Bduke 07:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright problems

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